The Hagee/CUFI Jerusalem event also included a speech by the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat. As pointed out by Netanyahu, both the current and former ambassadors to the U.S., Michael Oren and Daniel Ayalon, were in attendance.

The event included a fifteen minute film of organizations that have received 58 million dollars of donations from Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and John Hagee Ministries, Inc. These include entities in the West Bank such as the John Hagee Sports Building in the settlement of Ariel. Of the four major settlement blocs, Ariel is the one that extends the deepest into the West Bank.  It is also the settlement adopted by Hagee, other CUFI leaders, and many church adopt-a-settlement programs.

[Authors note 3/10/10: Richard Silverstein has posted his analysis of the list of groups which received donations from Hagee/CUFI. Link to Bibi Disses Biden.]

During a performance by singer Dudu Fisher, the camera turned to the audience and directly onto Joel Bell, head of the evangelical arm for World Likud. Bell leads Worldwide Biblical Zionists which is in the process of building a center to help Christian Zionists relocate to the West Bank.  

The Israeli national anthem, Hatikva, was sung by Robert Stearns, a CUFI director and major leader in the Apostolic and Prophetic movement, also known as the New Apostolic Reformation.  Stearns and Jack Hayford, who co-founded the Day of Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem, are a major link between Christian churches worldwide and their support for Messianic Jewish congregations, training and ministry.  Much of CUFI leadership represent the "new" face of Christian Zionism that is rejecting dispensational theology and promotes an end times narrative in which Israeli Jews must be converted to Christianity in order for the Christian Millennium to begin.

The event was broadcast internationally by GodTV which has headquarters in Jerusalem and claims an audience of over 400 million for their programming, including an array of apocalyptic end times prophecy.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and John Hagee have again spit in the eye of peace process attempts.  There was no doubt about the significance of the timing and the message of the event.  The messages were blatant and brazen, including a number of coded references to the eventual Christian supremacy over Israel which were included in both Hagee's speech and more shockingly in the invocation of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin.  Whether Riskin understands the implications of his words to that particular audience is unclear.  

The late Jerry Falwell claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that the Mayflower Hotel event in 1998 was planned by Netanyahu.

"I put together 1,000 people or so to meet with Bibi and he spoke to us that night," recalls Falwell. "It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Mr. Clinton."

That evening, Falwell promised Netanyahu that he would mobilize pastors all over the country to resist the return of parts of the occupied West Bank territory to the Palestinians. Televangelist John Hagee, who gave $1 million to the United Jewish Appeal the following month, told the crowd that the Jewish return to the Holy Land signaled the "rapidly approaching ... final moments of history," then brought them to a frenzy chanting, "Not one inch!"--a reference to how much of the West Bank should be transferred to Palestinian control.

The blatant Christian Zionist messages throughout the event made one thing clear.  They plan to pursue their agenda of moving the hands of the prophetic clock regardless of the plans of the U.S. government or Israel.  Netanyahu apparently believes that he shares the Christian Zionist agenda to a certain point, and that it is advantageous in the short term to flout the Obama administration by fanning the flames of Christian Zionist millennial zeal.

See recent articles on the dangers of Christian Zionism:

Saving Jews From John Hagee at Zeek
Loving Israel, Demonizing Jews at Zeek
The New Christian Zionism and the Jews at The Public Eye
Special Focus on John Hagee and Christian Zionism Talk2action